CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
- Background Of The Study
An e-service is any asset that is made available via the Internet to drive new revenue streams or create new efficiencies. E-Services or “e-Services” is a highly general/generic term usually referring to the provision of services via the Internet (the prefix ‘e’ standing for “electronic”, as it does in many other uses). It is a true Web jargon, meaning just about anything done online.
Until recently, the Internet was about the creation of e-commerce systems, and it was dominated by web sites and storefronts. We have now entered the next Internet evolution: the proliferation of e-services. E-services are modular, nimble, units of service made available from a business to other businesses and to consumers. Almost any business asset can be turned into an e-service and offered efficiently via the Internet. E-services come in the form of modular units, which can be combined and recombined to solve business problems and to help businesses to overcome the limitations of a static business infrastructure.
Successful businesses (for instance the Restaurant business, which this research uses to demonstrate E-services; “E-restaurant”) will be those capable of turning their business assets into e-services and deliver them via the Internet or at customers door step. It is easy for young academic graduate to own business outfits via e-services without having the initial huge capital required to start such business but using the modeling concept of the e-service technology that is widely acceptable to make financial benefit and thereby creating a living out of it.
Self-employment, particularly to most Nigerian graduates is only a last resort after years of failed effort to be engaged in the organized public or private sector of the economy. It is obvious that the challenges of inertia particularly in the area of finance are key factors to such entertained fear in the mind of the would-be business starter
Variety is the spice of life they say; therefore, alternative form of business operation and an initial small capital base to jump-start businesses are worth pursuing.
E-services provide this alternative largely; with e-services, warehouses exist abstractly on web pages with its far-reaching participatory audience. The paraphernalia of office is replaced by the web technology, for example, official records are sent, stored, queried, calculated and analyzed within the technology. The automation e-services provide through this technology accounts for its low financial involvement when compared to the existing business system that e-services can alternate.
1.2 Statement Of The Problem
The technology race which e-services is a child of, is all about cutting cost; with the advent of e-services, businesses can be tailored in their different forms as models of operational system at minimal operational and logistic cost. The compliment of piloting such models via the internet is equivalent to gaining “cheap” popularity and accessibility. Enumerated below are some of the problems that exist with the former system.
- The huge infrastructural cost of establishing a business from scratch particularly for a school leaver
- A poor reach of product and services.
iii. A static infrastructure in terms of location of business that gives no room for customers’ convenience
1.3 Aims and Objectives
The aim of this study is to design and implement a workable model of business operations that is capable of sensitizing a section of entrepreneurs particularly those constrained due to insufficient capital to establish businesses and to embrace alternative form of business operation using the technology on ground. The objective of the study includes:
- To provide a platform that can be used to initiate a Restaurant business through the internet; E-restaurant.
- To provide a workstation to the operators that has a degree of automation to run the outfit.
- To provide superior customer and firm interaction through IT.
- To work within an environment that provides analysis through
queries for business intelligence and competitive advantage.
- Purpose of the Study
- To demonstrate e-services application using known and common business environment; the Restaurant.
- Microsoft access, a database management system was used to store information received from the patronizing customers.
- Because of the web involvement, the HTML was used to design the web interactive and menu driven static pages.
- Embedded in the HTML are script languages (JavaScript) to add some complimentary functions to the web pages.
- Finally the ColdFusion, a web site technology which provide the dynamism the web pages needs to romance with the database.